Off the Bookshelf: ONCE MORE UPON A TIME, by Roshani Chokshi

 

Audible

Audiobooks

Audible Originals

Major fun. Clever. New twist. One of those, "Yeah, that's what I always wondered," kind of stories. You know, where you get to the end and "And they lived happily ever after," just doesn't satisfy?

So what did happen to the middle son and one of the other princesses if they met up and married? Did you always wonder why it was the youngest son, youngest princess, the pig boy and not the prince who got the girl, and the older brothers and sisters got left out in the cold?

In this clever, far-too-short audiobook, a prince and princess meet in the aftermath of one of her sister's faerie tale weddings and think they're in love, and before the end of their own wedding they're under a curse. They don't just fall out of love, their love is stolen from them. Or so they think.

They lose their kingdom because, duh, one of the conditions of remaining king and queen of a kingdom with "Love" in the title is they have to be in love. Both of them are kind of battered and scarred and rebellious thanks to the side effects of other people's faerie tale lives, and they set off on a quest to get what they think they really want ... or is it?

Ever wonder if the faerie tales really told you the truth about the sweet, innocent princess and the clever prince, or the honorable talking animals and the faeries who come out of the forest shadows to help a lost, destitute, honorable young lad?

More please?

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

"I felt something," Kurt said, after I had inhaled my half of the bar.

Ford pulled out his pocketknife and sliced the slab of fruit leather in half, passing one piece to Stephanie for Angela before pressing the other into my hand.

"Whatever hit Angela…" I swallowed hard against a wavelet of nausea that came from a flicker of memory. Honestly, the whole tug-of-war had happened so fast, I had to think back over it before I could sort out the impressions. "It was trying to hold onto her."

That made a whole lot more sense than Ford and Stephanie being strong enough to pull Angela from my telekinetic hold.

"It was a surge, or maybe more like a flash of light when a door opens, before someone inside turns off the light." Kurt shuddered and put his hand under my chin, making me raise my head and meet his gaze. "Black light. Not even black. Colors I've never seen before."

"Angela?" Ford went down in a crouch in front of her and caught hold of one of her hands.

The other hand was holding that strip of fruit leather to her mouth. Angela had inhaled the chocolate bar, but she was sucking on the dried fruit. Her head was bowed, her hair hanging loose like a curtain so we couldn't really see her face. What little I could see, her color looked normal. Ford was really the only one who could see enough of her to know how she was.

"I should hate to think that the rivalry between our towns has extended this far," Angela said after a few seconds.

"Huh?" Kurt said.

Stephanie chuckled. "It isn't the town attacking you, and you know it." She glanced over her shoulder at the house, and I looked too.

Weird. The house looked less menacing now. As if the attack on Angela, the attempt by something to drag her down, maybe keep her in the yard, maybe even suck her into the house, had used up whatever inimical energy it had.

"Or it sucked something out of you and kind of…" I stopped, a little stunned to realize I had been thinking aloud and everybody was looking at me.

"Kind of what?" Angela sounded almost normal, but her smile seemed thin.

"I don't know, maybe whatever it took from you kind of inoculated it? You're a really strong influence, and your power, your magic, kind of stunned whatever got hold of you?" I groaned and slid down to sit on the bumper of the Jeep. "That sounds totally stupid, even worse aloud than when I was thinking it."

"No, it makes a little sense." She sighed and offered us something close to her usual knowing smirk. "I hope you'll forgive me if I hesitate to act as a massive dose of penicillin or a bandage soaked with antibiotic ointment."

THE ADVENTURE: New Print Book Launch Coming! VIRTUALLY LONDON

 

So what's coming up?

VIRTUALLY LONDON

Neighborlee, Ohio Book 3

Is currently available in Kindle and through Kindle Unlimited.

On TUESDAY, September 1, the PRINT edition will be available.

I'm still trying to decide what to do to celebrate this book birthday.

Any suggestions?

Check out the Ye Olde Dragon Fiction Fan Group  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1436254603241495 on Facebook for more information.

Please consider JOINING the group, to stay on top of all news dealing with Neighborlee books,

upcoming books from the Two Olde Dragons of Ye Olde Dragon Books, and find out about goodies and fun times with the gang!!

My big experiment is in the finishing stages. Cross your fingers for me that it will work.

I'm creating the first of what I HOPE will be many Pick Your Path books -- where you can explore some of the places in my stories, and every few paragraphs YOU the reader get to decide what happens next. Yeah, you probably know the concept under another name, but it's trademarked, and I don't want to get into an argument with the people who own the name ... y'know?

Check back here or on the Ye Olde Dragon Fiction Fan Group for more information about the print launch of VIRTUALLY LONDON and the Pick Your Path book.

And check here twice a week through August and September for SAMPLES from VIRTUALLY LONDON. It's gonna be fun!

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

We crossed the yellow line together in slow, steady, almost synchronized steps. Kind of like the scene where the team of sheriff and deputies walk down the center of the street to meet the outlaw gang. We stepped up onto the curb, and crossed the tree lawn in two steps. Actually, the strip of grass between the crumbling sidewalks of Darbyville and the equally crumbling curb, glopped up with asphalt, didn't really count as a tree lawn. We lost our unified steps on the sidewalk. Ford and Kurt put one foot onto the lawn of the abandoned house about a second before Stephanie and I did.

Angela wobbled and her knees folded a little bit. She was in the middle of our group, with Stephanie and Ford on either side of her. They both looked back at the same time and reached for her. Angela let out a breathless little chuckle and took two steps onto the patchy, matted grass, and this time did go to her knees.

"Get her out of here!" I shouted, and didn't wait for anyone to respond. Looking back, that wasn't smart.

When I mind-lifted Angela, they were still holding onto her, and naturally they resisted when she rose up in the air and sort of went into a reclining/seated position. The couple of seconds of mental tug-of-war, hurt. Something kind of reach up through the power I had wrapped around Angela and dug claws into my brain. I had a nosebleed by the time we all got back across the street. Kurt yanked the back door of Stephanie's Jeep open and they got Angela inside.

I leaned against the back panel, my hands pressed against my temples, trying not to be sick. I had never worked myself into a strain headache like that before, and certainly not so quickly. Kurt ran around to the other side of the Jeep and found my emergency stash in my backpack. Dark chocolate studded with raisins and almonds, and a backup slab of fruit leather. By this time, Ford saw I was in bad shape. He pulled out his enormous blue cotton handkerchief to deal with my bloody nose. Stephanie saw the chocolate and snatched it out of Kurt's hand before he had it unwrapped, broke the bar in half, and pressed her half to Angela's mouth before tossing the rest back to Kurt.

Off the Bookshelf: OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF TIME, by Ally Carter

 Second-to-last in the Gallagher Girls series. (Dang, I sure don't want it to end!)

At the end of the previous book, Cammie decided to head out and hunt down her ancient enemy on her own. By herself, to protect her friends.

So what did she do on her "summer vacation" from spy school?

That's what we spend most of this book doing -- trying to figure it out. Because Cammie got her memory wiped. She shows up, broken and battered and with a huge black hole in her memory, and lots of weird fragments of memories that make no sense.

Cammie, Bex, Liz and Macy are seniors, but they've already proven they're tough, clever and kind of reckless spies who stick together. Best pals no matter what -- and furious with each other when they do stupid things like sacrifice themselves to protect their best friends.

The next book is waiting to be picked up at the library. I really, really don't want the ride to end ...

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

I have to admit that I avoided looking at the house in question. Instincts again? Who knows?

On first glance, it didn't look menacing or dangerous. However, when we got out of our cars and really looked at the place, a chill that had nothing to do with the bright fall day passed over and through me. It was an Indian summer-warm day, even with all the scarlet and gold leaves showering from the trees around us, thanks to a really strange cold spell just the week before. Well, that's what makes this time of year Indian summer, a warm reprieve after the first hard taste of the winter weather to come.

Then I realized just what I was seeing. The trees on either side of the house were utterly bare. The house didn't have any trees in the front yard, and while the grass was tall, proving no one had done any maintenance in weeks, maybe months, it was brown and patchy. I swear there were matted spots that looked moldy. It made very ugly contrast to the emerald velvet lawns on either side of the house. Except, of course, right along where the neighbors' yards touched the abandoned property. Spotty patches of brown extended into the other yards, like mold or the way dirty water wicks up into paper towels set on the edge of the puddle.

I decided to listen to my instincts, since Angela had just told me not to ignore them, and told the others what I saw. Just in case they didn't. No one looked annoyed. I had the feeling they were noticing other things, besides the evidence of how bad neighbors could lower property values.

"What do you feel?" Ford said, finally turning his gaze off the house long enough to glance at Kurt.

"Nothing." Kurt kind of frowned, kind of pouted, and those creases formed around his eyes, meaning he was concentrating hard enough to give himself a headache. "If anything is going on here, if there's something dangerous about those professors, it's not here. It's just an ugly old house."

"Perhaps." Angela tipped her head toward the house. "Shall we?"

I wanted to ask if we could all hold hands as we crossed from Neighborlee into Darbyville. The words clogged up in my throat, because I realized how much I sounded like a Kindergartener. Again, I should have listened to my instincts.

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

When Angela came out again, it finally occurred to me to get out of the front seat and slide into the back of the Jeep, to let her have the front. She winked at me as she swept down the walk again and through the gate. Everything felt wrong, and that made no sense. She closed the gate and hung a laminated sign on it, stating she would be back by two. That reinforced Stephanie's statement that she did indeed leave the shop, because who would have a laminated sign lying around if they didn't use it?

Angela wore a tweedy-looking coat in a deep shade of lavender, and she had changed her slipper-shoes for some stylish, light brown ankle boots. What did she expect to be doing, just going to the border of Neighborlee and Darbyville to get an impression of a suspicious house there? I wasn't planning on getting out of the Jeep. That realization just struck me at that moment.

Funny, how the position of being a guardian of Neighborlee had never felt so serious as it did right that moment, when I had no idea what was going on.

The ride went quickly as we caught Angela up on what Stephanie had observed during her time on campus, all the bits of gossip she had gathered, the people she had observed. Then I told them about the examination we had given my dormitory building the night before, and the really weird fight that had broken out over prop weapons from two different TV series.

"Did I just make things worse?" I had to ask, after confessing how I had let Mercedes know that other people knew about the experiment and we didn't much like it. Plus asking her not to record and report on the fight.

"Never doubt your instincts, Lanie," Angela said after a moment of quiet. Stephanie made the last turn onto the street where the border between our two towns followed the center yellow line.

"At least they can't say they weren't warned," Stephanie added. "And if you think about it, the students who are doing the observing are being treated unfairly. Their professors know they're in trouble, that they've acted without official permission, but the students doing all the hard work of observing and writing up reports think it's all legitimate. Until now, they also think nobody knows what they're doing. Anonymity gives some security and some boldness."

"Yeah, just look at all the superheroes who wear masks," slipped out before I even thought how that would sound.

Fortunately, that got smiles from both of them.

Off the Bookshelf: SHADOWS OF THE LOST SUN, by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis

The Map to Everywhere, Book 3

This is a book I got from the library sale. Wish I'd seen BOOK 3 when I bought it .... because yeah, it's kind of hard to jump into a series that is ongoing without any warning ... until I opened to the title page.

Especially with such an involved, detailed world.

Full of adventure and punny names and gobs of past history and interesting characters.

Thank goodness there aren't a lot of characters, because that would have made diving into the story even harder.

Okay, our heroine is Marrill, a girl from our ordinary world, whose mother is sick. Not sure if she's in this magical world looking for help, or she just got pulled in.

There's Remy, who is referred to as the babysitter -- and the best babysitter in Arizona. But we're not in Arizona anymore, are we? She's training to help run the ship. Which is good, because the captain, Coll, runs into a huge problem along the way and Remy needs to take over.

Then there's the Naysayer -- the list at the front of the book says he's the quartermaster, but he's such a doom-and-gloom, you have to wonder if he does any good. 

Then there are the pirats -- yeah, you read that right, no e on the end. Rats, who seem to serve as the crew.

Then there's Ardent the wizard ... maybe the less said about him the better.

Then there's Fin, a Fade -- and it took a long time to figure out what a Fade is, but you learn right away that Marrill is the only one who remembers Fin from one second to the next. People have to keep being reminded he's there, and they keep wanting to throw him overboard as a stowaway. Or worse. Poor guy.

Everybody is out to find something, and they're working to deal with quests and dangers to the world, and there's the Pirate Stream they're sailing on, which appears to be magical and changes everything it touches. Except their boat, fortunately! And .... whew!!! No wonder it took me so dang long to get into the story, just figuring out who is what is where and why and ...

And kids are supposed to read this? I'm an adult and had a hard time holding onto things.

Which means this is major fun, and eventually I'm going to have to get Book 1 and Book 2 just to figure out how things got started ... and yeah, there's at least a Book 4, because the ending of Book 3 was rather ... depressing, confusing, but touched with hope.

Whew!

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

"We might need more firepower than we have with just the four of us," Stephanie said, as she signaled for a right turn.

We were heading for the border of Neighborlee and Darbyville. A right turn would take us toward Divine's Emporium. How come I wasn't relieved that she decided to go get Angela?

When was I going to learn to trust my instincts over what people said? Granted, I was only eighteen at the time, and I was a little tired after flying patrol in the cold and all the running around I had done that morning. Plus I was a teensy bit distracted by the growing certainty I was going to miss my upcoming class. Did I have a quiz scheduled, or just another lecture? Who in the class would loan me their notes? More important, who among those friends took really good, coherent, usable notes?

See? Lots on my mind at the time.

Angela was outside, sweeping leaves off the flagstone sidewalk in front of the wrought iron fence when we pulled up.

"Is it—I don't know—safe for you to leave?" I had to ask, after Stephanie gave the bare bones of what we had discovered and what we were planning on doing with Ford and Kurt.

"You've seen me away from the shop before," Angela said, with a chuckle. "I'm not needed to anchor it down and keep this place from blowing away." She gestured with her broom at the front door. "Let me get a coat and leave a note."

"That's not what I was afraid of," I muttered, as she glided up the walk and went inside.

"Believe it or not, Angela has left the city limits, and the county, and even the state from time to time." Stephanie smiled, but her voice didn't sound as carefree as I would have liked.

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

Ford Longfellow drove up as I was walking to the corner, to wait for Stephanie. She had to take care of the students working the snack bar and then get her car and come meet me. He was on his way to meet Kurt, after picking up keys to get into the dormitory through the service entrance and go straight to the roof, to see if he could sense anything. When I explained the things Stephanie overheard and remembered, he got that too-quiet, thoughtful look I had seen him wear the first time we faced something nasty in Neighborlee together.

"Yeah, kind of the same thing for me. I didn't remember dreaming about the dormitories until Kurt mentioned what you three found." He shook his head, and his lips worked for a second like he was getting ready to spit out a bad taste. "Something tells me you two shouldn't go out there alone. Abandoned houses are always bad news. Especially on that side of Darbyville. Ever been out there?"

I shook my head. He tipped his head up a little and looked past me, and I turned to see Stephanie pulling up in her Jeep.

"If you ever need proof there's a defensive dome surrounding Neighborlee, that's the place for it. Like night and day, different sides of the street where the border between our two towns runs down the middle. Do me a favor, and wait for me and Kurt to catch up with you? And stay on our side of the street until we get there?"

I agreed. He tipped a salute off his eyebrow to Stephanie and drove off. I got in her Jeep and told her what Ford had told me. I hesitated to suggest we go get Angela and bring her with us. The thought of taking Angela to a place Ford Longfellow didn't like made me feel kind of queasy. That's the only way to explain it.

Off the Bookshelf: AGENT 355, by Marie Benedict

Audible 

Only from Audible

Audio book

Read by Emily Rankin

Marie Benedict provides a fascinating and far too short tale about a "might have been" heroine lost in the pages of history, from the Revolutionary War. The notes at the end of the book, detailing her research and how she came to the conclusions that created the character of Elizabeth and her actions as a spy behind enemy lines are as fascinating as the story itself.

Told like diary entries, readers/listeners follow Elizabeth as she chafes against the restrictions of society, and the false face she must wear to be safe during the British occupation of New York city during the Revolutionary War. When a British officer tries to take liberties with her at a party, she meets Robert Townsend, who becomes first her champion, then her friend, then her spymaster. Elizabeth realizes that the very thing she hates -- her position of being invisible, considered inconsequential because she is a woman -- makes her uniquely positioned to help the Continental Army.

A lovely story, far too short -- and heartbreaking, even at the moment of triumph.

Another author -- and narrator -- I need to add to my "get more by them" list.

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

"Anyway," she continued, "it's been quiet, all around. Maybe we've all been concentrating so much on the problem with those professors…" She frowned, eyes going distant.

"What did you just think of?"

"Just gossip." She shrugged and took a sip from the tall paper cup, her eyes hooded, her gaze pensive. "Despite every effort to keep that whole mess covered up, it's impossible to keep secrets on a college campus. Other departments know. Especially when the head of the psychology department looks daggers at his underlings who forged his signature and claimed they got approval and permission from him, even though he and the other leaders of the department never met to discuss the experiment."

"So you've overheard other professors talking about the mess when they come here, or come to the diner?"

"Diner. They don't talk about school politics here on campus. You have to admire them for that. It's best to put on a united front for the students." She took another sip. "What comes to mind now, and I have to wonder why it didn't register at the time, is that the two ringleaders in the whole mess, Tudderman and Winghast, have been seen making regular visits to a house in Darbyville. The street straddles the border with Neighborlee. It's near a main street, so the professors who live in Darbyville and take that route see them on a regular basis, coming or going, and never together. Someone finally remarked on it, and someone else said they had seen it, and I guess they started asking questions and…"

She shrugged, her lower lip sticking out as she visibly thought it over. "What made it memorable is that the house has had a for sale sign in the front yard for more than a year. The grass is high and some of the windows are boarded up. If either of them were planning on buying the house, maybe they don't know the other is looking at it."

"Maybe they're waiting for the price to go down more?" I shivered as I said it. It sounded stupid, but Stephanie didn't react, still deep in thought.

"Something strange is going on. I know that I've heard people talking about it, multiple times, yet none of those times… I don't know, the incidents didn't stick in my memory until just now." She sat up and looked around the Student Center. "Do you have time for a field trip?"

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

When Ford joined us, I let him know Kurt was going to try to catch up with him on his rounds at the college. I wasn't surprised they hadn't made contact yet. For all his love of gizmos, Kurt didn't like using his cell phone. Maybe he didn't trust what passed for security on anyone's phone. With something building up on WBC's campus, he was especially touchy about the wrong people (or things, or forces, or entities) accessing or interfering with messages. Since I had time, with no classes until just before lunch, I agreed to get the girls into the program, so Ford could look for Kurt.

Stephanie thanked me with a hug when I returned to the snack bar. The team of students who were supposed to close up the night before had left a couple messages about problems with inventory and changing the oil reservoir on the fryer, and she needed to get those problems taken care of before the first hungry customers of the day showed up. Heaven forbid she be unable to deliver baskets of fried cheese sticks and batter-fried veggies within seconds of being ordered. Miller's Diner had a reputation to uphold, after all. I told her about our fly-over of the dormitory and what Kurt had detected, what we had theorized, but it took me about five installments between customers. She was alone for the first hour the snack bar was open, but once the first shift of work-study students showed up, the traffic trickled down to almost nothing, and she could step out from behind the counter. We went over to a quiet corner of the snack area, partially hidden behind some particularly pitiful silk fig trees, to talk.

"Whatever you three picked up on, I'm not getting any warnings," she said, after we had settled down with berry smoothies. "No dreams, no vibrations, no sickening smells, or even smells that don't belong wherever I am." She muffled a chuckle, and I guessed that my expression showed just how confused I was by that last bit of information. "When I was pregnant with Bethany, every sense seemed to cross over into a smell. Noises that were too loud generated a smell like the dumpster behind Punderson's grocery last summer, when it was so hot and they dumped that entire order of dairy that had gone bad before it even arrived." Another chuckle bubbled out of her when I reacted.

That was one of the most noxious smells I had ever endured. It put texture in the air. Since Punderson's was near the offices for the Neighborlee Tattler, those of us who worked there had to put up with the stench that clung to it even after they had the dumpster steam blasted clean and sanitized. Some of us swore the light changed in that area behind the grocery store. If anything truly evil was going to tear the fabric of reality and invade from another dimension, that would be the weak spot, where reality had been scorched thin.

Off the Bookshelf: WRITING GREAT BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS, by Regina L. Brooks

Subtitle: Everything you need to know, from crafting the idea to getting it published.

Very thorough, very useful, very well-organized.

The chapter titles say it all (and lots of examples and even explanations of why you shouldn't do something):

Five Rules for Engaging Readers of Young Adult Fiction

Meeting Your Characters

Building Your Plot

Setting the Timeline

Learning to Write Dialogue

Getting Constructive Feedback

And the appendices:

Feedback Resources

Publishing Processes at a Glance

YA Publishers

And more than what I've listed.

If you want to learn about it or NEED to learn about it, here's a great foundation for either starting out writing, period, or switching your focus from another genre/market/audience.

New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

Stephanie Miller had Bethany with her when she came to open up the snack bar in the Student Center the next morning. She asked me if I would mind walking Bethany over to the theater building, to wait for Ford Longfellow, who was bringing Athena up for some experimental Kindergarten program run by the drama department. I kind of shuddered, visibly, when she said "experimental."

She laughed and assured me that nobody from the sociology and psychology departments were involved. It was all drama and playing with costumes and props and letting the children's imaginations go wild. I was glad to do it. Any excuse to spend time with Bethany. She chattered nonstop about her friends in the theater and the games they played and how she got to be a "sojer" and run around with a sword and protect the "pinsess" and the "keen." I couldn't figure out if she meant queen or king.

We reached the main entrance of the theater building just about the time the Longfellows showed up. Ford saw us, and instead of taking his truck around to the parking lot on the side, he pulled up to the steps and let Athena jump out to join us while he parked. No contest between the two five-year-olds, they were both my favorites. Getting hugs from those two little girls worked like a good strong inoculation of magic for the rest of the day.

I needed it. We all did. Not that any of us realized it when we started off on our errands that morning.